Superman

Superman was the first LEGO statue I created. After creating a few LEGO costumes for my son, I was asked by the creator of a local comic convention if I could make a 6 foot tall LEGO statue for his show. We discussed which character to do and even joked about doing the main five Justice League members. The first character I tackled was Superman.

At the time I didn’t think about capturing many “in progress” photos since I didn’t know how well this would turn out or if anyone would want to see how it was done.

Using a diagram of a LEGO figure, I measured out all of the dimensions that I’ve used for every statue I’ve made. I still have the sheet and reference it whenever I build a new statue.

The legs and torso were made with the same method I used to create my son’s costumes. The hips and arms were new parts that I didn’t worry about with LEGO costumes. For the arms, I wanted to make Superman in his classic hands-on-his-hips pose.

The head was a new and challenging experience. In the costumes I’ve made for my son, I was more concerned about making a head/helmet that he could see while wearing it. I also wasn’t concerned about head to torso proportions. I created the head out of foam. For the hair, I created a cardboard shell to fit over the foam head. I then used expanding spray foam (used for filling in crack and holes in walls) to spray on hair. After it expanded, dried, and set, I carved the lump down with a dremel into the basic hair shape. This exposed several holes in the foam. I once again used the spray foam to fill in these holes and shaved it down again. This still left some soft spots and holes so I filled it with bondo. I then covered the whole hair piece in plasti-dip and painted it black.

To keep the statue standing, I created a PVC frame inside the body. Unfortunately the PVC frame didn’t help the statue from getting knocked over. It also didn’t hold the arms in place for the whole show. The arms seemed to get the most wear from kids pulling on the arms or trying to see if the statue moved like a real LEGO figure. I spent a lot of time on Saturday walking between the 3 statues fixing the arms. By Sunday I had given up and just let the arms hang off the body.